Verizon taps Net neutrality veteran

When Verizon needed a lawyer to go to bat for the company against the Federal Communications Commission, the top U.S. wireless carrier tapped Helgi Walker.

It’s not much of a surprise, since Walker represented Comcast during its landmark legal showdown with the FCC this past April. In that case, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled that the FCC didn’t have jurisdiction over broadband services and couldn’t stop the cable behemoth from interfering with traffic to file-sharing sites. The case was not only a major victory for Comcast and other Internet service providers, but it also placed a huge question mark around whether the FCC has the authority to establish net neutrality rules, which require network operators to treat all Web traffic equally.

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“They’d be crazy not to hire her — she’s already won once on this very issue,” said Gigi Sohn, president of Public Knowledge, a consumer advocacy group. “The legal arguments are going to be extraordinarily similar, so why wouldn’t you re-sign your homerun hitter?”

Walker, a partner at the D.C. law firm Wiley Rein, is described as a rising star in appellate litigation and known for being poised in the court room. And though she holds conservative political views and has argued in court on behalf of major telecom firms, Walker has won admirers from the pro-Net neutrality crowd because of her sharp intellect.

“An appellate argument, when it’s well-done, is basically a conversation with the judges and she’s very good at developing that kind of back and forth with judges in an oral argument,” said Andy Schwartzman, president of Media Access Project, a public interest group that’s pushed for Net neutrality rules. “She is a formidable intellect and a very effective attorney.”

Even Sohn, a staunch champion of Net neutrality, calls Walker a friend and a “brilliant legal mind.”

“I give her a lot of credit for trying interesting and daring legal theories. She’s an under-appreciated asset in this town and I’m one of her biggest fans,” said Sohn. “She was incredible at that Comcast oral argument and she wrote amazing briefs, so I have the utmost respect for her though we probably agree on absolutely nothing in the legal space.”

While there are many similarities between the Verizon suit and the Comcast case, Walker took an unexpected move this time around by challenging the FCC Net neutrality order as a wireless license modification, which is under the D.C. Court’s jurisdiction. Walker also filed a motion for the case be heard by the exact same panel that heard the Comcast case, because of the similarity between the two lawsuits.

A graduate of the University of Virginia Law School, Walker has worked for some of the top conservative legal minds in the country. She worked as an associate in private law practice of Ted Olsen, the former U.S. Solicitor General, and clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. She also served as an associate counsel in the White House during President George W. Bush’s first term.

Justice Thomas, in particular, had a big influence on Walker, Sohn said, and Walker is said to admire his work. In 2007, Walker published an op-ed in The Boston Globe in defense of Thomas after media pundits criticized the Supreme Court justice’s memoir, “My Grandfather’s Son.”

“The irony is that the man who some regrettably still feel the need to tear down 16 years after his confirmation is among the staunchest defenders on the Supreme Court of a fulsome understanding of the First Amendment — thus protecting their right to voice their opinions, however mean-spirited,” Walker wrote. “What are the principles expressed in the book that are so worthy of vitriol and cannot be acknowledged as legitimate?”

Between 1997 to 2000, Walker worked at the FCC in Commissioner Harold Furchtgott-Roth’s office, where she served as senior legal adviser and chief of staff.

“Helgi is an incredibly bright and gifted lawyer and she’s even smarter than I am,” Furchtgott-Roth told POLITICO. “She knows the Communications Act of 1934 quite well. She was one of the people who helped write many dissents for me and she took a very fine understanding of the law to write those.”